Disappointingly merdiocre
However, it where actually sports additions compared to EO3, it also brings its set of flaws.
But let's get back to the start - the story!
This game plots you as a set of students in a school for dungeon explorers. You choose (or create) your team of 6 adventurers (3 at the back, 3 at the front), take on "courses" and "requests" that actually translate into "mandatory" missions and "optional" missions (respectively) and get at leveling up. The story does not seem to get your characters to talk to one another (just like EO3 - because you create your adventurers, they do not get individual roles).
The places you go to include (apparently) 3 schools, each of which you will visit through menu-based places navigation (going to the library, the principal's office, etc). People you meet with are presented with a 2D sprite, in plain anime style.
Game mechanics:
Developing your characters involves purely killing monsters to gain EXP. Each level up is random in characteristics upgrade, which means you might want to reload an earlier save if you get a minus to a characteristic or don't get enough HP's (just like old D&D rules, if you ask me, it just did not make sense to level up for a single HP!)
Upgrading your gear goes through grinding materials from the monsters in the dungeons, then "alchemically" assembling them. You can also take apart old gear to use the components into something else, which is a nice feat.
However, here as well, randomness applies and you can actually fail at assembling components.
Before being used, materials need to be "appraised" (identified?) by a cleric in your party (you could pay for it but money is scarce, so why would you waste it?) The cleric may also fail in appraisal, in which case you just try again. Or he/she may horribly fail and feel ashamed, in which case you have to go to the infirmary to remove this fear and try again. So basically you just lose a little of real-life time without any added gameplay value. There is no "appraise all" button either.
Speaking of gear, inventory management is pretty cumbersome. While you have a backpack in which items get added when you find them, and a locker to pile up to 500 items, the backpack is one of the 7 inventories at your disposal. So when you want to equip a character with a new item, you have to cycle through inventories to select the backpack, then cycle through the second presented inventory to get the character's, then confirm. I just takes no less than 10 clicks and probably more.
Which leads me to my biggest regret: user interface. This game has not received as much polish as Atlus has gotten me used to in other games. It just takes many button presses to do anything. Here are a few examples:
-
Difficulty is high, too, in the start when you create new characters. And it is not really "satisfyingly hard" in my view because there are "free" occasions on which difficulty is added without adding to gameplay or without giving a chance to "rather quickly" feel the self satisfaction of circumventing the problem - for instance:
- failing at healing a character, synthesizing an item, identifying components... do not bring any added value to the play;
- not being able to heal your characters through out of combat is straight out ludicrous;
- having to pay 100 gold to heal a character, when a (starting) monster's loot might be worth 1G, is demented demagogy;
... and then there are straight out design "under optimisations":
- not seeing how many MP's you are left with is boring - even if they are split per level;
- not seeing a minimap while walking is missing;
- having at least 2 text messages per attack (each requesting a button press to dismiss) is just slowing down things in a way even old school RPG's have given up;
- not having an "attack all" or "repeat attack" button slows down the experience;
- when you surprise your foes, you cannot use magic (only attack);
- to select each character's action, a neat animation shows the menu items coming up from the bottom of the screen - but that animation cannot be interrupted, prevents you from pre-inputting your commands, and just slows by almost one second each action for each character on each turn;
- your low-level characters are going to miss pretty often, so grinding is going that much slower;
- it is very hard to run, to the point where even if you choose to run every turn from the start of an encounter, you will most likely have been slaughtered before it succeeds;
- and so on...
Combat is your usual "menu- turn- based" affair. You select to attack, defend, use items, or use gambits, or use magic, for each fo your characters, then confirm. The only novelty here is the use of "gambits" which are your "over attacks" that slowly charge - executed by the whole group. Effectively running is one of those special attacks. Now these attacks are spectacular in effect, but they just take forever to charge - about a thousandth per successful attack, 10-to-30% per finished mission. So basically you have to live without them and to keep them for bosses.
Graphics: to reiterate, there are not a lot of animations but the hand-drawn 2D art is very good looking and thus I am satisfied.
Music is good, but it is very repetitive. There are 2 themes for the school's screens, one of which is only at the "main menu" level and gets interrupted by the second each time you go to a place where you can actually act.
Overall, this really feels like a game that could have used just a little more polish in user interface and gameplay rules, to open itself up to a broader audience. I usually consider myself as a good ear to old-school RPG's, but this one really requires a die-hard-fan's heart. Otherwise, just look at the screen shot and get Etrian Odyssey 3 already! (and a DS to run it, I am afraid.)